I removed the SATA Maxtor 160GB hard disk and bought a new Samsung 200GB
hard disk. This one is IDE hard disk. Now I solved the problem. The SATA hard disk was the liability.

I guess there are 3 partitons in Linux. One is called root partiton the other one is
the swap partition.

What is the other partition?
What is the use of the root partition?

I will install Mandriva after hearing from you.

[ I have already successfully installed Windows XP. I always keep it as a symbolic operating system. I have Partition Magic installed on Windows XP. It will easily
create partitions, formatting, etc.]

"What is the other partition?"

You do not need an extra partition, you can just have a swap, and root partition. As you become more, and more proficient in using Linux, you will begin to realise that having two partitions can become tiresome, especially if you have your files stored on;

/home/user-name/otherdirs/...

So some people, including myself have a /Files partition or /Music etc...
Others stored /usr in a separate partition but you do not need to worry yourself over such matters.
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"What is the use of the root partition?"

The root is like the C:\ of Windows, everything is stored on it, unless you declare other partitions to store certain things.

If you are installing Mandriva 2006, it should create the swap, and root for you, and that will do for your first use of linux.

Hope this helps

Thanks pritchardtom for your comments.

Total size of my harddrive is 200GB. I want just 40GB for Windows XP. The Windows XP works fine and I can go to the Internet using Windows XP.

I will first install Mandriva; afterwards I want to install SuSE.

Now my entire hard disk is NTFS.

Using the Partition Magic program I want change the 160GB of NTFS into FAT32.

Because FAT32 recognizes Linux.

After creating 160GB of FAT32 partition, I will create two 'ext2' Linux partitions.

Each will have 80GB.
The Partition Magic program works fine and I know how to do this. I have used the Partition Magic program for several years.

Your thoughts and comments are very welcome again.

Some distributions have a default partitioning scheme of /, /boot and swap. The /boot directory contains the kernel and other files necessary to boot the OS. You can partition the drive in many ways but the default is probably sufficient for most.

All files accessible in a Unix system are arranged in one big tree, the file hierarchy, rooted at /. All devices are connected to the tree including cdroms, external drives etc. / is analogous to c:\ but there are no d:\s or e:\s etc.

I would consider creating a seperate FAT32 partition for sharing files instead of using the entire 160GB. You can create the partitons via PM but when you actually do the install I suggest using a journaling filesystem like reiserfs or ext3. 512mb is a good size for swap. If you just creating a / then make it the remaining 160GB.

Thanks michaelk for the reply.

Let us say that I format 160GB using the Partition Magic program to FAT32.
Now the entire 200GB are NTFS.

Then I could insert the Mandriva CD's and install it. It will recognize the FAT32
and install the Mandriva.
If I executed the above, would it be possible to install SuSE later on?
Your comments and thoughts are welcome.



Those Mandriva CDs were downloaded from a FTP site.They are Mandriva 2006. I am delighted to have such a latest version.

[I had Mandrake 10.0 on my old computer for over 2 years. It crashed and everthing went to hell. It was a 32 bit computer. The new one is 64 bit and I have downloaded the 64 bit Mandriva too.]

Create a 40GB partition for your XP install and a FAT32 partition for sharing as desired. The FAT32 partition is just for files and not for any operating system.
Create an extended partition that uses the rest of the unallocated space.
Install mandriva and specify the size of the partitions as desired. That way you can install SuSE later.

michelk

Do you mean a FAT32 partition for maintaining files, data, etc for both Linux and
Windows XP?

Is it possible to have a common partition to store your work?
This is a good idea.

I thought it would be better to create 'ext2' file systems.

What is the difference between 'ext2' and 'ext3' file systems?

I am not familiar with so-called journalling file systems. What is it?

I have 1GB of RAM. I have learnt that the maximum swap partition should be
double the size of the RAM.

Why do you think 512 is ideal in my case?

The 2x RAM rule of thumb is outdated. The actual amount of swap required really depends on what applications you are running and how it is used. A low end user i.e websurfer, email, etc does not require much swap if any with 1G RAM. A high end graphics user or high traffic web / mail server will require more swap. The 512MB is middle of the road and its better to have some and not need it then to need it and not have any.

ext2 has been the defacto standard for linux filesystems but was never designed for large filesystems and takes forever when checking for errors i.e fsck. ext3 is basically an improved ext2 with a journal. There is lots of information on the web about journaling filesystems.
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue55/florido.html

Since FAT32 can be read/write between by both OSs it can be used as a common partition to share data but there is are limitations. The max file on a FAT32 partitions is 4GB which can be problems if wanting to transfer large files like DVDs.